THE SPICE OF LIFE
Without extraordinary experiences, without things one can talk about, life would be boring. It is the unexpected situations, the surprises, that "spice" it up and make it interesting, full of memories, worth living.
Last Friday was such a day. After training the puppy team on their now prolonged loop of 5,2km, Comet looked fat. She was a bit on-off on this run, as well as on the last couple runs, but I thought that´s normal, she´s 8,5 months after all, has been harness broken in mid January and that´s simply alright.
When I fed her in the evening, her stomach looked really big. I touched it and my hand was full of loose hairs. Her nipples were biger. At this point, those of you who read this and are breeders, already know what follows, right?
With a terrible feeling in my stomach I finished feeding and went home. The next morning I asked Jachym to come "examine" Comet once more. He just about fainted. Another litter on the way! Two carefully planned litters were born this past June and Tazlina had her three girls (not quite planned for that year) with Canuck in October.
"After all, it is already 2007" I tried to joke, but my boyfriend didn´t share the laugh.
I checked the calender, finding out that Comet and Star had their first ever heat cycle in mid December, when they were 6 months old. I remember more than clearly how I found it out - Comet and Frostie appearing suddenly from behind the kennels, flirting together, big smiles on their faces (Frostie had a bigger one). Than I thought, hm, it looks as if she´s in heat. As it was early in her heat cycle, her first time, and I was there in the dog yard, letting the dogs to play and "supervising", we didn´t even consider a real romance could take place.
No signs of pregnancy whatsoever for the whole 2 months. We completely forgot about it. Just now.
Monday morning we rushed into our vet´s office with a request for an X-ray.
The experession on the face of Dr.Anna Waldensten, walking into the room, saying "it´s two puppies" convinced me she wasn´t joking.
Well, to make the story shorter, this Friday, October 23, Comet welcomed her two babies to the world.
As we weren´t completely sure that we can take the day of her little romance with Frostie for granted, we kept checking Comet day and night, taking turns in during the night supervisions. We decided it will be a lot less stressful for her if she stays outside, in her kennel, so we just moved her sister Star to another kennel and put lots of fresh extra straw in Comet´s dog house.
The days since Monday went by quite slowly and I was nervous, knowing there´s only two puppies, that looked quite large. On the 68th day, she ate a bit slower than usual, spent more time inside her house and started reorganizing the straw. We had a visit here that stayed quite long, which was usefull - we wouldn´t sleep much anyway. We even joked together that a baby electronic nanny would be a great solution, put it in the dog house, together with a web-cam and relax.
The last visit we made to the kennel was betwen 5 and 6 am. I have to say, that I did sleep in that day and quite a bit. At nine o´clock Jachym returned from the kennel with a basked we use for puppies, saying "are you comming with me to pick them up?" I told him not to joke with me before I had my cup of coffee, but he replied: "there´s two of them, red and a piebald".
Comet was really cute, when we came to the kennel, she left her den and went to greet us, asking us to follow her so she can show us her babies. She is very gentle and calm, relaxed dog and we could see it in that moment more than ever before. Just a real cool mother.
Well, we decided we´ll have them and Frostie DNA tested when they are about 2 months old, before we have the litter registered and a pedigree posted on our website. Just to be really sure. One never knows. Life is full of surpries. This litter has deffinitly "spiced" up our lives once again. And that´s how their names Chilli (red boy) and Ginger (sable piebald girl) came up.
You can visit their puppy page click here
The "constant" grandmother
Katerina